talk to a stranger

http://www.chancechat.com/

More AOL job loss

The AOL transition from online access provider to online advertising is making waves and the latest one has dumped 2,000 jobs. This is in addition to last year’s 5,000 employee lay offs where AOL said would work to boost traffic to its ad-supported Web sites by giving away AOL e-mail accounts, software and other features once reserved for paying subscribers.

Employees at AOL's Dulles, Va., location have been speaking in hushed tones for weeks that big layoffs were coming. Last week speculation intensified when employees reported seeing large pallets of empty cardboard shipping boxes arrive at an AOL warehouse.

AOL Chief Executive Randy Falco told employees

"This realignment will allow us to increase investment in high-growth areas of the company -- as an example, we added hundreds of people this year through acquisitions -- while scaling back in areas with less growth potential or those that aren't core to our business."

Last year's lay offs were mostly in customer-service and marketing as AOL opted to stop producing and distributing its infamous free trial discs. The latest cuts were expected to affect employees across the board. While more reduction in staff is expected by year's end, severance packages are to include at least four months' pay. In addition, AOL recently announced it was moving its headquarters to New York to be closer to the media advertising industry.

Last month, AOL announced that it was consolidating its advertising operations to share innovations across the company and help potential advertisers more easily buy ads across AOL properties and third-party sites that have become part of the AOL network through various acquisitions.

Shares in AOL LLC's parent company, Time Warner Inc., (Charts, Fortune 500) dropped 17 cents to $18.81 in Monday trading.

SOURCE: CNN

Will Sprint Move to Kansas?

When Sprint purchased Nextel in 2005, establishing executive offices in Reston was part of the merger agreement. Nextel started and matured in Northern Virginia, and some board members believed maintaining a Northern Virginia presence was crucial to the future of the combined companies and shifting from traditional telephone lines to wireless operations.

At the time of the merger, top executives said they did not want to uproot employees. Nextel employees were reluctant to move to the Midwest, and Sprint folks wanted to avoid the high cost of living of the Washington area.

According to former executives, leaders of Sprint Nextel have discussed the possibility of relocating the company's headquarters from Reston to Sprint's longtime home in Kansas. Sprint spokeswoman Leigh Horner said the question of a headquarters move is "not an issue the board has on the table right now." However, rumors have picked up listeners when the Wall Street Journal reported that Gary D. Forsee had mentioned the idea when he resigned as Sprint's chairman and chief executive. Acting chief executive Paul Saleh discounted the gossip though.

The company currently has two corporate offices. The executive headquarters is in Reston and the operational headquarters in Kansas. Integrating Sprint and Nextel has proven to be difficult which has caused some in the company to wonder if consolidating operations at a single location would smooth the transition.

Sprint, which has Kansas roots dating to 1899, has for decades been the largest employer in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The company occupies a 200-acre office complex that resembles a large college campus.

Of the 58,600 people employed by the company, 13,000 are in Overland Park. About 4,300 people work in the Washington area.

"One advantage to moving the headquarters is that they already have more employees there," said Christopher King, an analyst who covers the company for Stifel Nicolaus, an investment research firm in Baltimore. "But they may have more trouble attracting talent."

Northern Virginia business boosters note that Sprint's presence in the region has spurred other wireless-related start-ups to locate nearby. Several of those ventures have been launched by former Nextel employees.

SOURCE: Washington Post

Wordie

Here is a game my supervisor and I started. We each get the same Word of The Day email and we each try to say something to each other using the word. Here is mine for today.

Me:
I do believe that too many of today's youth are purblind.

His Response:
Yup, that just makes me feel that much more impervious to their agglomeration as to I'll never truckle to them


Word of the Day

Monday
Purblind \PUR-blynd\, adjective:

1. Having greatly reduced vision.
2. Lacking in insight or discernment.

Sunday

Impervious \im-PUR-vee-uhs\, adjective:

1. Not admitting of entrance or passage through; impenetrable.
2. Not capable of being harmed or damaged.
3. Not capable of being affected.

Saturday

Agglomeration \uh-glom-uh-RAY-shuhn\, noun:

1. The act or process of collecting in a mass; a heaping together.
2. A jumbled cluster or mass of usually varied elements.